The Gleiwitz incident (German: Überfall auf den Sender Gleiwitz; Polish: Prowokacja gliwicka) was a covert Nazi German attack on the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz on the night of 31 August 1939 (today Gliwice, Poland), widely regarded as a deceitful false flag operation staged along with some two dozen similar German incidents on the eve of the invasion of Poland leading up to World War II in Europe.[1] The attackers had been posed as Polish nationals. Adolf Hitler invaded Poland the very next morning after a lengthy period of preparations. During his declaration of war, Hitler did not mention Gleiwitz incident by name, but grouped all provocations staged by the SS as an alleged Polish assault on Germany. The Gleiwitz incident is the best-known action of Operation Himmler, a series of special operations undertaken by the Schutzstaffel (SS) to serve Nazi German propaganda at the outbreak of war. They were intended to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany in order to justify the subsequent invasion of Poland. The evidence for the Gleiwitz attack by the SS was provided by the German SS officer, Alfred Naujocks in 1945.[1]

On the night of 31 August 1939, a small group of German operatives dressed in Polish uniforms and led by Naujocks[3] seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish (sources vary on the content of the message). The whole operation was named "Grossmutter gestorben" ("Grandmother died").[4] The Germans' goal was to make the attack and the broadcast look like the work of anti-German Polish saboteurs.[3][5]

To make the attack seem more convincing, the Germans murdered Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried German Silesian Catholic farmer known for sympathizing with the Poles. He had been arrested the previous day by the Gestapo. He was dressed to look like a saboteur, then killed by lethal injection, given gunshot wounds, and left dead at the scene so that he appeared to have been killed while attacking the station. His corpse was subsequently presented to the police and press as proof of the attack.[6]

In addition to Honiok, several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp[3] were drugged, shot dead on the site, and their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.[5][7] The Germans referred to them by the code phrase "Konserve" ("canned goods"). For this reason, some sources incorrectly refer to the incident as "Operation Canned Goods".[8] In an oral testimony at the trials, Erwin von Lahousen stated that his division of the Abwehr was one of two that were given the task of providing Polish Army uniforms, equipment, and identification cards, and that he was later told by Wilhelm Canaris that people from concentration camps had been disguised in these uniforms and ordered to attack the radio stations.[9]

The Gleiwitz incident was a part of a larger operation carried out by Abwehr and SS forces.[5] There were other incidents orchestrated by Germany along the Polish-German border at the same time as the Gleiwitz attack, such as a house torching in the Polish Corridor and spurious propaganda output. The entire project was dubbed Operation Himmler and comprised a number of incidents[10] intended to give the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany.[8]

On 1 September 1939, the day following the Gleiwitz attack, Germany launched the Fall Weiss operation – the invasion of Poland – initiating World War II in Europe. Hitler cited the border incidents in a speech in the Reichstag on the same day, with three of them called very serious, as justification for Germany's invasion of Poland.[10] He had told his generals on 22 August, just a few days earlier, "I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth."[5][8]

American correspondents were summoned to the scene the next day[5] but no neutral parties were allowed to investigate the incident in detail and the international public was skeptical of the German version of the incident.[12]

There have been several adaptations of the incident in cinema. Der Fall Gleiwitz (1961), directed by Gerhard Klein, DEFA studios (The Gleiwitz Case; English subtitles), is an East German film that reconstructs the events.[13]

It was also mentioned in a video game; Codename: Panzers (2004), which stirred up controversy in Poland where the game was briefly discussed in Polish media as anti-Polish falsification of history, before the issue was cleared up as a case of poor reporting.[17]